Stereoscopic 3D Cell Visualization

Cell visualization is an important field in biomedical imaging. A number of tools exist to create visualizations on the molecular and mesoscopic scale, illustrating e.g. cellular processes and interactions, membrane simulations or protein assemblies. But although there are already a number of stunning cell visualizations available, all these approaches seem to completely ignore the potential of stereoscopic 3D visualization. We present a simple cell visualization, illustrating a journey from the mesoscopic to the molecular scale. It was created by two students with no previous 3D modeling experience, partly based on previous work of the CELLmicrocosmos project. After a short introduction to Blender and their participation in the seminar “Stereoscopic 3D Visualization” at Bielefeld University, they created a stereoscopic cell animation which debuted in the CinemaxX Bielefeld in 2012 and which was shown at the “Stereoscopic Displays and Applications XXV.” conference in San Francisco in 2014. A paper discussing the highlights, drawbacks and future potential of this visualization will be published within the next weeks.